My diagnosis story: DKA with 625 mg/dL

Finn
Thu, 05 May 2022 15:58:59 +0000
My Story

I’m Finn. I got my Type 1 LADA diagnosis on Friday the 13th (of August 2021) with a blood sugar level of 625 mg/dL - DKA was a pretty clear cut diagnosis.

I’d been losing a lot of weight the few weeks (or maybe months, I wasn’t weighing myself regularly) before going to the hospital, but I’d also had my first Covid vaccine when I started to notice the weight loss and the weight loss accelerated three weeks later after getting my second shot. In the week before I went to the hospital, I lost 4kg/8.8lbs in one week.

We (including my doctor) initially waved it off as just a bad reaction to the vaccine, but eventually realised we needed to call an ambulance. Afterwards, we were able to look back and recognise the symptoms of DKA - tired, not hungry, throwing up, fruity-smelling breath, having to pee a lot, very dry mouth, fast breathing. Since I wasn’t able to keep food down in the final few days before calling the ambulance, I was drinking hot water with honey in it and eating applesauce - both of which we realised after the fact didn’t help my situation at all, but we had no way to know that at the time.

I spent 3 days in intensive care and then another 11 days in the ‘normal’ ward. Once I got my appetite back, I can honestly say the hospital food was delicious. It probably helped that I hadn’t eaten a full meal in over a week.

In the past 8 months post-hospital, I’ve brought my HbA1c down from 11.4 to 6.5 and I’m pretty happy about that. I feel back to normal… if you ignore the 5 daily injections and the pockets full of glucose tabs.

12 posts - 6 participants